POCATELLO — What do Hugh Jackman, “The Music Man” and a passion for your work have in common?

They were all topics that Portneuf Medical Center’s CEO Jordan Herget touched on at the CEO Breakfast Series presented by Pocatello-Chubbuck Chamber of Commerce and Regence BlueShield of Idaho on Wednesday at Idaho State University.

Herget, who became PMC’s CEO in August of 2020, was the keynote speaker of the event and discussed numerous topics ranging from his background, to what drew him to the administrative side of medicine, to the qualities he considers crucial to being a hospital CEO.

In regards to the latter, he used his May visit to Broadway to illustrate his desire to be a leader who is enthusiastically engaged with his team.

While at Broadway, he had the chance to watch “The Music Man,” whose lead character dons a flashy marching band uniform with campy gold stripes and sings and dances on stage. The role was filled by a man Herget saw as stoically masculine thanks to his performance as Wolverine in the “X-Men” series.

“I was going to see ‘The Music Man’ … and was super excited to see Hugh Jackman,” he explained. “So I was thinking the Wolverine, with guns and action and all that stuff.”

But as he watched Jackman perform in a role vastly different from his popular performance as the adamantium-clawed mutant, he noticed a lesson embedded in Jackson’s commitment to the role that he carried home with him that day.

“I didn’t know this, but Hugh Jackman’s first love was the stage,” he said. “He really didn’t have to do this. He’s a multimillion-dollar movie star. He doesn’t really need to go sing and dance, right? … But he was here on the stage doing what he loves, and that was so impressive to me. You could tell the performance wasn’t beneath him and as a leader, he just lifted up everyone who was involved in the performance. … He was engaged with his team. He was energetic, and he never lost that energy during the show.”

It was this passionate commitment and devotion to a team that Herget appreciated and is something he explained he tries to incorporate as he oversees Portneuf Medical Center and 1,600 employees.

“I want to be more humble,” he said. “I want to be engaged. … And so that’s really what I’ve asked my team to hold us accountable to. ... We want to increase trust at the hospital and in our organization.”

Herget previously had oversight of the Kaiser Roseville Medical Center in California as senior vice president and was area manager of the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan. But this transition to becoming a CEO of an Idaho hospital was a goal of his for several years ever since he’d pass through on his way to national parks around the area.

“I would see the hospitals in these areas, whether it’s in Jackson or Star Valley, Idaho Falls or here in Pocatello, and actually set a goal that I wanted to be the CEO of one of these hospitals,” he said. “And so here I am today, the CEO of the hospital in Pocatello, and I just couldn’t be more fortunate.”

While his first year as CEO was during the time that COVID-19 was rattling the world, the next year Portneuf was selected out of 30 hospitals and more than 200 sites of care and awarded the Ardent Health Services’ Quality Award to recognize its clinical excellence.

“In 2021, (Herget’s) team saw nearly 32,000 emergency room patients, delivered 1,130 babies, and cared for thousands of inpatients,” said CEO and President of the Pocatello-Chubbuck Chamber Matthew Hunter, who introduced Herget on Wednesday. “Even with record high numbers of patients, Portneuf earned the much-coveted Ardent Quality Award.”

Herget also addressed the nursing shortage that has affected the nation, with Portneuf being no exception.

In addition to putting together a wage and compensation package to compete with the wages of surrounding hospitals and businesses, he said his team has also enhanced their student loan repayment program and service award program. Instead of every fifth year, nurses will get a bonus every year on the month they were hired.

While these adjustments will help with more fiscal issues that result in high turnover rates, Herget said they want to also tackle the morale-end of the shortage problems. For the first time in two years they’ve been able to hold an employee picnic, and hope to hold more events that help employees feel appreciated.

“We want people to appreciate being here,” he said. “We don’t like turnover, and we want people to stay in their job. These things bring people together, and so it’s really a combination. You can throw money at it, but you also need that good morale.”

Already Herget said they’ve seen Portneuf’s turnover rate decrease. It was at its highest at 26 percent and has now fallen to 21 percent.

“Across the country, industries are around 23 percent, so we are doing better than national averages,” he said.

On the topic of nationwide events, he added his thoughts on President Joe Biden’s remarks regarding the end of the pandemic when the president announced it during a “60 Minutes” episode that aired on Sept. 18.

“I think that we’re coming out of COVID,” Herget said. “There’s still some incident here and there, still a couple COVID cases in the hospital, but it’s almost more of an infectious disease that we’re used to now at this point. So we want to guard against it. I think the social distancing, masking and vaccines in some ways have been effective in helping curb the pandemic. So I think we should still be on guard, but I think we’re probably out of it.”